


This is What We Say to Bad Days

by Neurtsy



Category: One Direction (Band)
Genre: Alternate Universe - Neighbors, Bottom Harry, Flower Child Harry, Lonely Louis, M/M, Musician Harry, Other, Songwriter Harry, Strangers to Lovers, Top Louis
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2015-08-30
Updated: 2015-08-30
Packaged: 2018-04-18 03:25:24
Rating: Not Rated
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 4,469
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/4690382
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Neurtsy/pseuds/Neurtsy
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Kisses caught in the peace after summer storms.</p>
            </blockquote>





	This is What We Say to Bad Days

**Author's Note:**

  * For [TheWakingDreams](https://archiveofourown.org/users/TheWakingDreams/gifts).



> (Louis thought an elderly lady lived beside him in the house with the colourful garden and trimmed bushes, so imagine his dismay when a frog-like boy shows up on his doorstep during a storm - Harry loses power and Louis has a generator) 
> 
> Your prompt was so simple and cute! I wish I had the time to make it more detailed and give it more of a plot, but I was pinch-hitting and a little short on time. I hope you like it!

When his elderly neighbour dies, the body collected and the news slowly spreading out to non-relatives, Louis’ first thought is how he won’t have to shovel the driveway and path up to his front door this winter. 

His next thought is a sprawling wave of numbness, muted shock a pale blue running through his body, and then disgust pointing inwards at the heartlessness of that initial reaction. 

 

It startles strangely in his chest when he rounds the bend on his way home from work, and there’s no car parked out in front of the hollow house, no lights on behind the curtains.

 

The finality of it sets in alongside the chill in the air, when a _‘for sale’_ sign goes up on the lawn, and Louis doesn’t stop by to check in anymore. 

 

❀

 

He doesn’t get out as much as the temperature drops and windows frost up in mornings. 

He goes in to work when he has to, sits through conference meetings, irons out the wrinkles in his shirts, and no one at the office seems to mind when he’s not there. 

 

❀

 

The evenings seem so much later than they really are on the drives home, with the worn-in house around the bend always dark and quiet, a silent landmark before he makes the uphill crawl and turns into his own driveway. 

 

He finds more reasons to do his work from home, taking back files in thick brown envelopes, waiting to turn into paper cuts and structure. 

 

There’s just no pull to make the slick and grueling drive in to somewhere civilized, to find gaunt and greying faces washed out by computer screens, tongues talking about the coming snowfall. 

There’s coffee in the break room, but it’s better brewed from home, and the business of small talk feels less forced when it’s just coming from his radio, and doesn’t push for his own replies.

 

❀  
❀  
❀

 

The snowfall comes on despite Louis’ best efforts to hide from it. His hands stiffen from shoveling a path to his own door, and with the callouses comes a soft sadness, aching gently when there isn’t another path to be cleared. 

 

The ache is the same colour as the trees and hills, all blue and white.

 

❀

 

He gets up in the dark, retires in the dark, and spends the scarce hours of pale sunlight craving summer air, and trying to shake the chill from his bones.

 

The sun is blinding, but much too far away, and the plows that dare to make the crawl to the far-back country roads track salt stains up the cuffs of his trousers. 

 

The snow trapped in the treads of his boots leak into the carpeting, and it’s everything he’s been dreading about the cold months and long nights.

 

❀

 

But things begin to thaw. 

 

Then one morning Louis wakes, and the ache has lessened. The smell in the air is different, colour slowly budding, waking his mind like a memory. Winter fading, giving way, pushing back like cuticles as spring steps in to bloom. 

 

❀  
❀  
❀

 

It’s a winding drive to the middle of nowhere, all green and grey. Lonely colours, Louis thinks. To him it brings on thoughts of a long journey, the soundless way the trees fly by on either side, patience and comfort, and still, loneliness. 

But the hushed colour is soon conquered as the weather warms, and soon wildflowers lining the roadside catch his eyes like the blurs of a kaleidoscope. Yellow dots of ragweed stippling in between the rocks and grass. Coltsfoot, and purple comfrey. 

 

❀

 

It falls into a pattern, the day-to-day drive and motion of peace, chasing the setting sun, and feeling the warmth as it catches and holds in his windows and mirrors. 

 

Sometimes there’s warmth in the clouds too, all naked, pink and streaking through the sky, like coral. And low hanging, fat with the promise of a gentle morning.

Tonight, though, the clouds are scarce, and lit up deep and indigo where they do sit, watchful and waitful. They keep an eye on him as he drives home, and he eyes them back in return. 

It’s too early for the collection of summer storms that press down from the sky in late summer, but it’s not too soon for the memories of them to come squirming in. 

 

❀

 

Something’s different on the drive home one evening. The sun sits fat along the edge of the sky, and dusk is promising purple fingers through the trees as Louis’ fingers tap along the wheel. 

 

He can’t find the off-detail, and it nags, grey and weighty, in the back of his mind as he toes off his shoes and sits with a drink. Frogs and crickets pick up a chorus around his house, and the blackness of the trees as the sun sets brackets him inside. 

 

It’s the next drive home that he catches it, his mind sharper and searching for something. Colour, bunched together all neat and round where there was never colour before. Rows and baskets of flowers grouped together prettily in front and along the lines of the lawn of the hollow house beside his, just before the bend. Even the grass seems brighter, preened in his peripherals before he’s making the turn, and heading home. 

 

It’s impossible to miss after that first spotting, and it becomes his new landmark, watercolour smears out his window, the first thing he sees in passing, and the last thing in the evenings when his eyes feel dark and strained. 

 

He likes the decoration. Bright life and growth to take the place of quiet sadness and empty walls inside his head. 

 

Spring spins itself in silk and soon summer takes its place, spreading its wings and soaking up the warmth, lazy and brightly hued.

The days begin to pass that way too - warm and lazy, colours bright in the corners of eyes, and a sense of peace settles in amid the blossoms and pollen. 

 

❀  
❀  
❀

 

Leaves have already begun dropping, browning and curling on the ground, and Louis finds them to be drastically premature when paired with the heat sticking his shirt to his shoulders, and dampening the pale blue fabric.

The temperature has been rising, unsteady and climbing, and bringing with it a toiling pressure.

The skies are growing old and dark, and as he drives he wonders if he'll make it to the weekend, or the storm will catch him first.

 

He spends the queasy days of waving heat trapped in the office, a slave to the air conditioning, counting down the weekdays. 

Two down, three to go, and then it’s two, one, a final hour, and he’s free. 

 

He bides his time on the road, the ache of motion in his bones and the gasp of sea air in his lungs, as he drives further and further from the business, closer and closer to the shore. 

The clouds along the edge of the sky are a reptilian kind of green, all tinted grey and scaled. And with the clouds comes a scent on the air, alive and electric, and it makes Louis uneasy. It brings on the feeling of nightfall, and a brewing storm, something dark and dangerous.

 

❀

 

He slows around the bend, and catches the colours in his eyes. This time it’s not just colour, but movement too. 

A sloped back, stooped over, hands dipping into the earth, pressing and nurturing the flowering plants. 

 

Louis resists an urge to roll down his window in passing, letting in the grey sea air and calling out, warning the figure to pack up and retreat inside. 

But he continues driving, thinking that the clouds and fever in the air will be enough to warn.

 

❀

 

The storm hits as he’s washing up, and the noise of the first heavy raindrops are disguised as the dripping from the tap.

 

The rain makes him tired, but it keeps sleep at bay, drawing out the ache behind his eyes until his chest feels almost weightless, feeling as clouded as the sky. 

 

❀

 

He’s still awake when the power cuts, and from the basement, a deep groaning picks up - the inner workings of the generator, complaining as it wakes. The pressure in his eardrums serves as a low kind of company, and the presence is almost enough to lull him into sleep. 

But there’s something keeping him alert and watching the storm. Outside the living room window, tree branches bend and dance, bowing as the wind takes the lead, dipping them low. 

The sound of rain against the windowpane sounds like pebbles thrown, and the wind turns into some far-distant voice, calling out to him where he sits, still and kept quiet, calling to him, to play, to join the wild electric heat of the summer storm. 

 

And then it’s not just branches and rain, but a black shape oozing out from the shadows, rolling towards his house. 

His pulse is in his throat all at once, matching the pace of the clouds, rolling and spinning above.

 

Gravel crunches, shadows pass on the wall and Louis turns to follow the motion.

 

Through the slanting rain he sees the headlights coming up the drive, then hears the rapping that comes against the door, soft as the rainfall pounding down. 

 

It sinks in to his skin, salted and cool, how late it is, how long he’s been stationary and sleepless, watching the storm unfold. 

 

He’s careful as he unlocks the door, just as wary to let the storm in as he is a stranger. 

 

He opens the door to a long shadow, with damp hair curling around an unfamiliar face. And further up, eyes, green and grey, and he thinks of patience and comfort. 

 

“My power’s out,” the stranger says, and a large part of Louis’ apprehension fades. It’s a deep voice, but smooth and soft around the edges, polite, and quiet through the rain. 

“I saw your light on the hill,” he continues. “Looked like a lighthouse on the shore, considering how wet it is.” 

 

Around them, the air has become the ocean, dark and wild, the wind pulling like the tide. 

 

Louis can see the way the rain has soaked through the man’s clothes, darkening colours, plastering to his skeleton and pinkening skin underneath. 

 

“You’re underprepared, coming out here,” Louis says, aiming for a conversational path, but missing, and scattering into the trees. “Storm season, the power’s always going out these parts. Everyone around here has got a generator in their basement.” He hooks a thumb down and over his shoulder. 

“Come in,” he adds, suddenly so aware of how the stranger’s hands are clasped together in front of him, holding a brown leather bag, spattered with raindrops and good manners. 

“I was just wondering if I could charge my computer,” the man says, stepping inside lightly. “I’m sorry - I know it’s late.” 

“Of course, it’s no problem,” Louis says, moving to close the door behind him. When he turns, he extends a hand in greeting, and it’s picked up and held absentmindedly. “I’m Louis,” he says, feeling the way his fingers have been caught and cradled. 

“Harry,” he gets in return. “I’m lucky you were home. It’s nice to meet you.” 

Louis drops his hand and gestures down the hall, and they follow the light to his sitting room. 

 

He points him to an outlet, watches as he guides the cord in, feels the walls shift against the tireless pull of the wind. 

 

There’s a pale pattern beneath the damp shoulders of the man’s shirt. Pink and green, lily pads, Louis discovers, matching the faint colour coming to life in his cheeks and eyes. 

 

“Can I get you a drink?” Louis asks, directing his feet towards the kitchen, and he fills the kettle when Harry thanks him. 

 

A silence is coming, threatening to conquer, and Louis searches for an appropriate way to slice through it, his mind tangled with the weight of the late hour. He’s beaten to it in the end. 

“I’m not used to storms like this,” the man says, and Louis turns to find him occupying the doorway, hands held together, docile at his front. 

“Are you from the city?” Louis asks, and he nods.   “Always wanted to come out here, though.” The wind rattles the frames of Louis’ kitchen window, and the kettle begins to whine. 

“Storm season only lasts a few weeks,” Louis says, batting a hand apologetically, and gets a smile in return.

“It’s been really lovely. Rain in the city just feels...”

“Dirty?” Louis offers, and they both laugh quietly. It’s not quite comfortable, but a step closer. 

 

❀

 

They drink together on Louis’ couch. Louis’ legs feel slight and choppy beside the bend of Harry’s knees, but he’s soft-spoken, with a kindness to his movements, and Louis soon relaxes. 

“Did you know the last owner?” Harry asks, and the quiet weight to his eyes, the spread of his fingers around the mug has Louis hesitating after a brief nod. 

 

“I thought someone else had bought the house,” is what he says in place of some better words. “An old woman, maybe. People come out here to retire.” There’s a silence as Harry watches him, waiting for the rest of his thoughts to descend. “It’s funny how we get little notions like that.” 

“An old woman,” Harry says, a wide smile wrinkled with amusement stretching out. “Imagine your dismay...” he makes a small gesture that spans up his chest, a light flicker that gestures deeper than his skin. 

“Imagine my dismay...” Louis repeats, his eyes stuck on the fanning of Harry’s fingers through the air, just below eye level. 

 

“Most people know each other around here,” Louis says a beat later, mouth warm and the twitch subsiding in his wrists. 

“I like that,” Harry says, sipping, and eyeing the power bar on his laptop. “In the city you pass so many different people on the street, but never really have the chance to get to know them.” 

“What did you do there?” Louis asks. It takes the place of the _‘get to know me,’_ that’s perched on his tongue. 

“Flower shop,” Harry answers, and ideas of colour and light come into Louis’ mind. “But I think I like it better, planting them out here and just letting them grow. I still go in part-time,” he adds. There’s a shyness living in between his teeth, and as Louis watches, Harry softens under his stare. Not wilting, but close, drawing in delicate and close to himself. 

“That sounds nice. There was never any colour in the garden there before.”

Harry hums his agreement, and Louis reflects on how it had looked up close. The shallow flowerbeds unfilled but maintained, a small pin wheel pushed into the grass, a mail box at the end of the drive. Every shade of green, and the other offered colours all fleeting patches of weeds. 

 

Louis doesn’t bother extending it to how there’s a lack of colour here too. The soft taupe couch, the off-white walls. Even the frames on the walls hold tight around muted colours, pale yellows and greys that capture rolling hills and far-away faces. 

 

Harry doesn’t seem to be put-off by the neutrals Louis has inadvertently surrounded himself with, and it’s his relaxed posture that has Louis sinking back into the cushions, brushing off the trivial particulars of his office job, and wandering into interests, and the close-by local places he recommends. 

 

The rest of their conversation takes a long descent into static inside Louis’ skull. The hour and the pounding rain takes it’s toll, and soon they’re both yawning, eyelids low and silky, and when they finally stand, the movement stretches muscles they hadn’t noticed turning in. 

 

Louis eases Harry out the door into the night. Above them the sky is a crushing navy.

“Stop by again sometime,” Louis says as Harry shakes his hand and steps down the driveway, sheltering his bag from the rain still coming down. “If the car’s here, I’m here.” 

“I will, and thank you,” Harry says, and leaves. 

 

❀

 

When Louis wakes, the clouds are rolling by like watercolour, and the only signs of his late-night visitor are the pair of mugs sitting in the sink, and twin tea rings fading into the wood of his coffee table. 

 

❀  
❀  
❀

 

The clouds don’t part for days, and when they do, there’s a faint rapping at Louis’ door, and he opens it to find Harry, tall and bright, extending a thin vase with clipped flowers towards him. 

“To thank you,” he offers, and Louis accepts, the colours coming alive in his hands, dark orange and powder blue. 

 

When Louis looks up from the bouquet, the glass smooth and cool in his hands, Harry’s standing by the door, feet just shy of turning to leave. But he’s lingering, waiting for something, and a cool nervousness in Louis’ stomach is urging him to say something. 

 

Harry takes the smallest step back as birds call from the trees outside, and Louis squares off his shoulders, meets his eye and asks him to come by for dinner on the weekend. Harry’s smile is nothing more than a gentle curl around the edges, and the nerves inside warm and simmer. 

 

❀

 

When the weekend comes around, the evening air outside has tapered off into something bearable, insects humming and Louis’ screen door opened to let the breeze through.

 

The sun’s slinking away when he opens the door for Harry, and they share twin smiles, a little reserved, a little abashed. 

Pasta’s cooking low on the stove, and Louis pours them each a glass of wine, settling nerves and drawing out the dark hues and quiet atmosphere.

 

“You know your way around the kitchen,” Harry comments, elbows resting on the island’s countertop, watching Louis. 

“Have to, living out here,” Louis says. “We’re a bit too far out for routine take aways. Here,” he adds, gesturing with his knife to the cutting board. “You can be my sous-chef.” 

 

❀

 

It’s a silent, darkened house built on murmured conversation, and with the smell of sweet basil and tomato sauce, Louis feels Harry’s eyes on him, and looks up to find clouded green, deep-set in the dim lit room. 

There’s an ugly sensation kicking up and fussing in his gut, and he wants to tear it out, wants Harry to tear it out. 

But he’s bad with beginnings, always getting stuck on endings, and doesn’t know where to look to find the words to get him unstuck.

 

❀

 

The evening ends with garlic stains on Louis’ cutting board, colour high on cheeks, and gently parted lips pressed to the corner of Harry’s mouth, a hand cupped and curling around Louis’ wrist, the song of crickets in the dark caught in a standstill.

 

❀  
❀  
❀

 

It’s too hot to bother wearing his suit jacket home, so Louis folds it instead, placing it on the passenger’s seat, and rolling up the sleeves of his olive shirt.

The air is thick and humid, but the breeze carries a shiver in its undertones, and Louis wonders if there’s one storm left in the season. 

 

He makes the drive slowly, his eyes better now at picking out the details and vibrancy of the journey. 

 

He slows around the bend, and sees Harry sat amongst the flowers like a daydream. 

Harry spots him, the only car on the stretch of road a hard sight to miss, and he shields his eyes from the sun with a crooked hand, and waves him over. 

 

Louis pulls into the driveway, leaves the keys in his ignition and steps out onto the grass. The soft press beneath his shoes feel fake in its plushness.

 

❀

 

He risks the smudges of earth along his trouser knees when he sits beside him, feeling younger than the weight of the day wants to allow. 

 

The grass has pressed into Harry’s hands, leaving lines across his palms, a winding and scripted language Louis wants to decipher.

 

❀

 

Harry moves closer to him on the ground, brushes their legs together and laughs quietly when Louis flinches, and covers Harry’s knee in a clumsy motion. Then their skulls come close to aligning, Harry dipping in, sweetly and patiently, and waits for Louis to accept. 

He does, and they kiss. It's slow, and shallow, with an underlying tremor of a summer storm. 

 

❀  
❀  
❀

 

The season bends, summer making a cool and amber transition into autumn, and floral print shirts and threadbare jeans appear in Louis’ dresser drawers, a guitar tucked in beside his bedside table. 

 

Their evenings spill from conversations over dinner to nestling their bodies together on the couch under the pretense of following shapes and voices on Louis’ tv. 

As the nights grow colder, their limbs move closer and closer, skin alive and a few sparks short of lighting up.

 

The leaves change and glimmer, and litter the ground with reds and yellows, and brushing shoulders and interlocked fingers stops feeling like enough.

 

Louis shifts beside Harry on the couch, his arm alive with half a notion to move and drape around Harry’s back, drawing him in and drawing breath beside him. 

Harry shifts too, seeing the motion before it happens, and angling his body towards Louis’ and away from the screen. 

"Can I…well, can we…?" Harry stops, smiles, words and eyes shy, but body brave, an arch beside Louis on the couch. 

Louis’ mind doesn’t hesitate, but his lips part in a silent stumble, mute beside the way Harry’s body is so close. 

His own body answers for him, and the soft quake and tremble of their skin together doesn’t ask for words. 

 

They trade in the couch for Louis’ bed, their scent already buried in the blankets from nights of Harry cuddling into his side, Louis’ hands petting shapes into his hair and over his skin.

 

Louis’ hands shake as he removes their clothes, and soothes the tremors by hiding them in Harry’s hair, thin and soft and curling around his fingertips.

There’s a still to Harry’s limbs as he shifts beneath him, ready and silent, and a flush picks up beneath his collarbones, and high up on his cheeks as he breathes.

 

Louis moves in, fast and graceless, crashing their bodies together, a red hot metal collision, and he pulls back, the chaos hot and tight in his muscles. 

It was rough and tactless and not at all how he meant it to be, and he underlines his apologies with a gap drawn between their bodies. 

Harry's bigger, longer, but Louis feels mammoth and clumsy beside him, heavy, and with the force of a battering ram.

 

He's not used to this feeling, the sensation of being the aggressor, but Harry's so simply pliant beneath him, and it's the only thing left for him to be. 

 

"It's alright," Harry tells him. He's sheepish, almost apologetic with his woollen words. "I'm not so delicate."

Louis finds he is, though, his skin like lace, all white and full of tiny holes, delicate and good for nothing but the sensation of Louis' fingers trailing over it, nothing but how gentle it all feels.

 

There’s a sensation burning up inside his body, encircling his heart as Harry’s bones stretch out across the sheets. 

A weightlessness, as if there are tiny air pockets, trapping inside beneath the surface, causing these small breaths of air to gasp past his lips, and Harry’s hands digging their fingerpads into his back seem to be outlining them, tracing out above his trembling lungs, and soothing how they twist and rock his skin. 

 

❀

 

The sunlight has died. 

Shadows come in, soft at first, little blinks that cast across the ceiling. They fall in strokes, butterfly wings, eyelashes that lower.

Louis falls asleep wrapped up in the gentle presence of Harry’s skin. The soft scent of pink lilies, the feeling of being kissed, a barely-there press. 

 

❀

 

The weightlessness in Louis’ stomach has turned itself to a deep warmth in his bones when he wakes, a slow blink against the newly woken sun. 

 

There’s a gentle motion and a melody beside him, woven through the sheets as Harry sits, half propped up with his guitar pressed against his bare chest. 

 

Louis stays still, the blankets wound between his legs and weighted down with the warmth from the closeness of Harry’s body. He watches, eyes so tempted to close again, but fixed on capturing the images of Harry’s skin and Harry’s fingers, morning-kissed and tender.

 

It’s a delicate sight, something Louis feels he’s being allowed to see. Something private on display for him, all gently lit and not offered up for any other eyes. 

Something as simple as the rising of Harry’s chest as he hums, and the way the sheets pool around his waist. 

His fingers finding the place they’re made for on the strings, curled easily around the fret, and strumming absently, abstractly, and the song he’s pulling out is abstract too. 

 

Blue-tinted peace, a little sad, and soon comes a voice to stroll beside it, rich and pure as the scent of earth that lives in the dips of Harry’s palms. 

 

 _“Hello, sweet misery,_  
_I'll let the rain speak to me,_  
_let it hold me 'til I’m clean…”_

 

His eyes find the stirrings of Louis’ mind, still hazy and wrapped in linen, and he smiles, his fingers still drawing a morning melody from the strings. 

_“I’ll dry the way I’m meant to be._

_So let the clouds enjoy their stay,  
this is what we say to bad days..”_

 

❀

 

Louis falls into sleep again when the song is finished, and Harry’s skull has joined his on the pillow again. 

 

He dreams away the tail-end of autumn, the pictures in his head and in his heart all tiny details, shades and lyrics of Harry. 

Rose petals, and the knots in his hair, the stones in his shoes..

Thoughts and simple pieces that begin to blur with the small parts of himself, until they weave together, a strange and patchwork kind of poetry.

The callouses across his palms, and how they press their weight and worry all along Harry’s skin and spine. They tell stories, sad and strong, perhaps too rough, but the skin beneath them is yielding. 

Louis thinks how silly it is, the way Harry’s body lives in a state of betrayal, so large and long and layered with muscles, when what he wants is sweetness and tenderness, and to be small and curled and cared for.

Harry's hands are soft, full of stories sweet and gentle. They don't strike out at Louis, or prod him, searching for explanations. Instead, they softly tug at his own hands, eager but slow, a hushed whisper urging him along, saying _come on, come on, I know a place that we can go._

 

And as the dawn breaks, casting light along the walls, all soft peach-coloured and yawning, Louis smiles to himself, leaning in to press a kiss to Harry’s eyelids. 

 

❀  
❀  
❀


End file.
